Should Video Games Have Ratings Like Movies Do
Video games are usually longer, more immersive, and more popular than are movies, especially among younger audiences. Players spend more time playing, and thus being influenced by, the games they enjoy. As such, the call for restraint gets made loud and often, with some suggesting that games deserve an official rating system similar to movies.
To put it bluntly, this argument is problematic at best and dangerous at worst. Movies get rated by an official board, staffed by people who are often given board positions in secret, who make their ratings in secret, and who tend to find no problem giving whatever torture movie or war-based kill-fest that happens to be out an R, but then tend to freak out when a penis is shown doing something penis-like. The board rules, assigns a rating to a film, and then distribution outlets (like theatres) are required to regulate who sees the movie according to the rating.
This is hardly a model we want to embrace in the game industry. Rating for maturity, as measured by some imaginary age-based cutoff, and tethering those ratings to particular moments in a game, approaches games incorrectly. Take a game like Limbo, a game all about the realm after death, full of all sorts of grizzly and macabre death scenes and some very, very creepy moments. There is no sex in the game, no cussing, and it plays like a platformer. A game like the original Zelda involves huge amounts of killing, as does Space Invaders. Halo has as much violence as Duke Nukem, but a lot less sex. How can these be rated based on age? They can’t be – at least not effectively.
Better that ratings for video games merely provide information about content: the game contains violence, cartoon violence, nudity, partial nudity, crude language, depictions of the afterlife, etc. Let the players, or their parents, sort out the rest.